Caused by: org.apache.logging.log4j.LoggingException: log4j-slf4j-impl cannot be present with log4j-to-slf4j

According to Spring documentation (as pointed out by Simon), we want to exclude the “spring-boot-starter-logging” module from all libraries, not just from “spring-boot-starter-web”.

configurations {
    ...
    all {
        exclude group: 'org.springframework.boot', module: 'spring-boot-starter-logging'
    }
}

…instead of…

dependencies {
    ...
    implementation('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter') {
        exclude group: 'org.springframework.boot', module: 'spring-boot-starter-logging'
    }
}

I myself had the same problem and solved it with this solution.